It’s Yahoo, it’s BoomTown and so it’s an internal email memo from CEO Carol Bartz to staff about the employee layoffs at the Silicon Valley Internet giant yesterday.

Here it is:

Yahoos,

I want to share some tough news with you. Today, we began notifying some Yahoos that they will lose their jobs. Most of the reductions will come from the Products org and, when completed, will affect about 4% of the company.

I know this has been rumored for some time. It’s disappointing when things like this leak, and it certainly doesn’t make it any easier for anyone involved. This was a tough call, but a necessary one. We need to make these changes now to ensure that Products is structured and running the way we want as 2011 begins. And that means we need fewer Yahoos in some areas, and different types of Yahoos in others.

There are several reasons for this. First, we’ve found a lot of duplication in work between Products and the regions. Second, it’s no secret that we’re cutting investment in underperforming and non-core products so we can focus on our strengths (like email, the homepage, search, mobile, advertising, content and more). And lastly, we need to get the Products cost-structure in order so it aligns with our development plans for next year and beyond.

You’ve heard me say before that I didn’t come to cut Yahoo! to greatness. That’s still true. This decision is about more than cost savings. The changes are meant to get us into a position so we can invest more in the kind of products and technology we know we need to be successful. The process that begins today–along with Blake’s past org changes and new Products operational plan–helps to get us there.

It’s never easy to say goodbye to Yahoos we know and work with, especially before the holidays. Please know that we’re helping those affected with severance pay and benefits, plus services to help them find other jobs.

One last thing before I go: It’s important to put this in perspective, and remember that we’re making good progress on our turnaround. Margins have expanded. Revenue growth has stabilized after a long period of decelerating trends. Product rollouts are accelerating as we modernize our infrastructure. Our Search alliance with Microsoft continues on schedule, and more.

We’ve got a lot of potential, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Let’s stay focused and not lose sight of that.

Carol

Nokia says the cuts have been on the table since October, when it announced a personnel restructuring during its Q3 results. And indeed it has. From a press release issued that month:

“Altogether, the planned changes are expected to result in a reduction of up to 1,800 employees globally, as activities are planned to be discontinued and integrated. Nokia will begin applicable consultations with employee representatives about these plans.”

News of the layoffs comes on the same day that Nokia said it will miss another shipping deadline for its new E7 smartphone. That device, which will run the next iteration of the company’s Symbian OS, was expected to launch this year. Now its debut has been postponed until early 2011.

One big surprise: The job market with the strongest growth in tech jobs–with a net gain of 900–was Oklahoma City. Don’t pack up the U-Haul just yet. Yes, it added the most technology jobs of the 60 cities in the survey, but it also had one of the smallest overall tech job pools, accounting for only 18,000 jobs, ranking 57th of the 60.

The New York statistical area, which includes New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had the largest pool of tech jobs at 317,000. It lost 8,700 jobs during the survey period, which as we all know was during the worst throes of the recession and the catastrophe that struck the data-driven financial industry. Fifty-three out of 60 cities saw job losses. Nationally, the group found that the tech industry lost about a quarter million jobs in 2009.

Statistically, the TechAmerica report considers San Francisco, Oakland and the San Jose areas as separate. But if you added them all together, tech jobs would outnumber New York at 394,000. San Jose led the nation in tech pay, at an average of $132,100 per year, and not surprisingly had the highest concentration of tech jobs as a percentage of the workforce: One job in three is tech-related.

The only markets to see job growth aside from Oklahoma City were places like Huntsville, Ala., and San Diego. You can take a look and see how different cities fared here.

Yahoo is indeed preparing to lay off employees, in a reduction in force that will be done in December.

But the layoffs, first reported in TechCrunch at 20 percent, will be closer to 10 percent and be almost completely centered on the product organization under Chief Product Officer Blake Irving, said sources close to the situation.

That would mean layoffs of about 650, since that part of Yahoo has about 6,500 employees.

Yahoo, in fact, just put out a statement saying the 20 percent figure was “inaccurate.”

Said the company in a statement: “Yahoo! is always evaluating expenses to align with the company’s financial goals. However, a 20% reduction in Yahoo’s workforce across the board is misleading and inaccurate.”

Well, kind of, because it is a big layoff nonetheless.

In addition, said sources, the layoffs might result in the outsourcing of some functions at the company.

Even at a lower figure, the move will surely be yet another blow to morale at the much-buffeted Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Just this week, for example, Google gave each of its employees a 10 percent pay raise and $1,000. Facebook, similarly, is showering benefits on its fast-growing pool of workers.

Along with a spate of top-level executive departures, Yahoo is under scrutiny by Wall Street, as well as the subject of much takeover speculation.

This has put Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz under even more pressure to show results after almost two years as top manager.

Known as an exec who knows how to cut costs, she has yet to prove she can grow the Yahoo business with new innovations.

Yahoo has just over 14,000 employees. It has undergone many layoffs and restructurings, but only once in a major one under Bartz.

“I’m not afraid
To take a stand”
—Eminem

Disclaimer: my business partner, Marc Andreessen, is on the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). I note that I have no inside information, and this blog post is based purely on published material. In 2007, I sold Opsware, the company that I founded and ran to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6B. I worked at Hewlett-Packard from 2007 to 2008 as an executive in the software business.

Recently, my old company Hewlett-Packard has been in the news–and not in a good way. I’ve been watching the coverage from the sidelines up to this point, but felt increasingly compelled to join the conversation and share my point of view. So here goes.

After firing their CEO, Mark Hurd, the HP board has been accused of everything from incompetence to being prudes. The criticism comes from credible, important journalists and bloggers such as Joe Nocera from the New York Times (NYT), prominent economics blogger Felix Salmon, and former GE (GE) CEO Jack Welch. In addition, HP competitor Larry Ellison lambasted the board and even went so far as to hire Mark Hurd to be President of Oracle (ORCL).

So why in the world did the HP board fire such a high performing CEO? Don’t they care about profits and shareholder value? Aren’t those the most important things? Who cares about his personal shenanigans? Did Mark and his marketing contractor even have sex?

While I am pretty sure that there is much more going on behind the scenes than has been broadly reported, as there often is, let’s look at what has been reported:

* Mark Hurd falsified expense reports.

* The false expense reports are related to a contractor named Jodie Fisher, a former softcore porn movie actress and Playboy model with no relevant marketing experience, who HP was paying up to $5,000 per marketing event.

* At the time of his departure from HP, Hurd issued a public statement saying that he’d violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct:

“As the investigation progressed, I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career. After a number of discussions with members of the board, I will move aside and the board will search for new leadership. This is a painful decision for me to make after five years at HP, but I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader at HP and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time. I want to stress that this in no way reflects on the operating performance or financial integrity of HP.”

Let’s start with the issue of falsifying expense reports. This factor has been largely dismissed in the press with characterizations like this from Joe Nocera of the New York Times:

“When pressed, H.P. said that Mr. Hurd had fudged some expense reports.”

Nocera goes on to argue that there must have been an alternate motivation to dismiss Hurd, because clearly no CEO would be fired simply for “fudging” an expense report.

When I first read of the expense report issue, my reaction was the opposite of Nocera’s. If the Chief Executive Officer of a public company falsifies any official financial statement, he must be fired. In my mind, this is non-negotiable. We are not talking about a low-level employee tossing an extra receipt into his expense report. We are talking about a public company CEO who is paid tens of millions of dollars a year and is responsible for the integrity of the company’s financial statements fraudulently reporting his own expenses. Why is this a problem?

Every person who invests in Hewlett-Packard does so on the basis of HP’s financial statements. Every pension fund, every retiree, every charitable organization, every employee who joins and is compensated via stock options. When they do so, they trust that the statements are true and that the numbers are accurate. The person they trust to ensure accuracy is the CEO.

If the Chief Executive is willing to compromise the integrity of the company’s financials for any reason, then it is impossible to trust any statement. Every day, there are many potential reasons to falsify financial statements. Here are four examples:

* If you miss the quarter, shareholders will lose money.

* If revenues aren’t high enough, you’ll be forced to lay-off hard working, valued employees.

* If you grow slower than a competitor, you may jeopardize your job.

* A shareholder that you’ve been having an illicit affair with doesn’t want the stock price to go down and threatens to tell your wife.

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

What reason was so powerful that it caused Mark Hurd to break his ethical standard, falsify an official financial statement, mislead the board, and ultimately be fired? It seems that this was done to cover up a “close personal relationship” with a woman named Jodie Fisher, who later accused him of sexual harassment, then subsequently withdrew her claim after Hurd personally paid Fisher a large sum of money.

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

Finally, Hurd admitted in a press release to violating the company’s standards of ethics and integrity. So what? Why do companies have standards and ethics anyway? Shouldn’t they just be concerned with profits? Do we want choir boys or shareholder value?

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

Companies should not merely be thought of as money generating machines. Business can represent human society at its best. A business is a group of people working together to deliver value to the world and improve people’s lives. When done ethically, business quite literally changes the world for the better. However, if the dark side of human motivation is not mitigated with standards and ethics, business can destroy.

We saw this unfold at Enron, a company that was, in its time, celebrated for its impressive profits. Underneath the profits was a culture designed from the ground up to completely ignore any ethical standard including a dazzling display of ethically questionable sexual activity among its executives. These activities, such as promoting secretaries to executive positions in exchange for sexual favors, parallel Hurd’s behavior with Jodie Fisher. In Enron’s case, the bad behavior bled over into first line employees who conspired to create blackouts in California in the name of profits and in the absence of ethics. Ultimately, Enron imploded in a swirl of criminal behavior that bankrupted the company, but not before destroying tens of thousands of peoples’ life savings and damaging millions of innocent victims. After the fact, the press bemoaned the culture that lead to the destruction. However, the same reporters instantly forgot the cause as they cavalierly dismissed Hurd’s ethical breach.

In closing, I point out the impressive courage of the HP board of directors to ignore popular opinion and do the right thing. It is not an easy thing to fire a popular, highly successful CEO. It’s even more difficult when you know that you will be roundly criticized for tolerating that same CEO’s failure to develop internal successors. Despite those factors, Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors stood tall and protected the company, its shareholders and all of us from a dark and destructive journey. As a member of the business community and as a citizen, I am extremely proud of and grateful for their actions.

Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

Last Friday, former Google China head Kai-Fu Lee (pictured here) dialed up BoomTown from that country for a chit-chat interview about his life since leaving the search giant one year ago and plunging into the world of incubation, recruiting and early-stage funding for start-ups there.

Being president of Google’s China operations is far different from being CEO of Innovation Works, which just celebrated its first anniversary.

And, although he left Google (GOOG) on tense terms, said many sources, Lee complimented it as still having the best technology in the world.

Nonetheless, he also added it will only become harder for any U.S. company to compete in China over the next few years for a variety of reasons.

Lee would not specifically talk about Google’s fight with China over censorship issues, but said the bigger problem for it and other U.S. Web companies was actually that they are not local or nimble enough to beat out an increasingly trained Chinese tech workforce.

According to Lee–as well as explained in an interesting deck he sent me that is embedded below–Silicon Valley can no longer rely on a tech edge that it has long had, and China units of U.S. tech companies still will not empower their Chinese employees enough to compete.

“In China, there are a mass of very talented engineers who can attack a long-tail opportunity very quickly,” he said. “This kind of speed is critical in this market now.”

That’s why–unlike most Silicon Valley venture firms with a presence in China–he decided to focus Innovation Works on early-stage companies.

“We see it as a unique opportunity to provide a refreshing accessibility for small, but promising, Chinese companies,” Lee said. “There are a lot of inefficiencies.”

With a heavy focus on mobile–which Lee considers the key arena in China, much of it based on versions of Google’s Android mobile operating system–Innovation Works has focused on a dozen start-ups, including:

Tapas: An Internet smartphone operating system–based on Google’s Android–tailored to Chinese users.

Wonderpod (Wandoujia): A software “assistant” for Android phones to download applications, videos and music without consuming expensive mobile bandwidth.

Umeng: An analytics tool for mobile developers in China.

Photo Wonder: Mobile phone software for enhancing and sharing photos.

Ascending Cloud: A game publisher built on proprietary technology for developing and publishing social and Web games for over 30 countries.

Lee said now that the strategy and investments are in place, next year’s focus will be on nurturing the companies Innovation Works has invested in.

While he said he knows that it is still early, Lee–who has also worked at Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT)–said he thinks that China, specifically Beijing and Zhongguancun, could become the next Silicon Valley.

“There are 300 million Chinese using mobile devices and there is no one or two dominant player, as is the case in the U.S.,” Lee said. “It’s the same across a variety of areas, so the landscape for small, scrappy start-ups is wide open and huge.”

We’ll see how it all turns out. but here is the must-see deck from Lee, as well as a press release on Innovation Works’ first anniversary and a detailed description of it:

Innovation Works Overview (US Press)

Sep 8 Press Release

Incubation Programs

But some of you may be able to transform yourselves into one-person news factories, says Paul Biggar, who wants to make money while helping you do that.

Biggar is a co-founder of NewsLabs, a start-up that promises to create a business around the work of individual journalists. The idea is that the writer writes and NewsLabs does everything else: Ad sales, “community management,” promoting the work on Google, Facebook, Twitter et al, and so forth. In exchange, the company wants a 20 percent cut of all revenue.

In other words, Biggar and co-founder Nathan Chong want to become publishers with an all-freelance workforce.

NewsLabs just graduated from Y Combinator’s three-month bootcamp and has been working with a starter group of journalists for a couple months. So it’s still mostly theoretical at this point. My concern is that the help NewsLabs says it can offer doesn’t solve the real problem: The economics of Web publishing are brutal, and in most cases they only work on a Google- (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO)-size scale.

Biggar tells me that NewsLabs won’t solely be dependent on ad revenue, so that’s good. But all of the ancillary businesses that can support a Web-based journalist–conferences, job boards, and the like–also require either great scale or a very, very specialized niche. So Biggar and co-founder Nathan Chong have their work cut out for them.

Here’s Biggar’s extended pitch, via an interview I taped with him this week at Y Combinator’s Demo Day presentations:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100326/can-newslabs-give-laid-off-journalists-another-chance/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100316/aols-golden-parachutes-28-4-million-for-four-former-executives/ http://allthingsd.com/20100316/aols-golden-parachutes-28-4-million-for-four-former-executives/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:45:46 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17443 Want to make money? Become a former AOL executive. The Web publisher paid out $28.4 million in cash and stock to four top executives it replaced last year.

The payouts are part of a broader reorg CEO Tim Armstrong has put into place since coming aboard from Google (GOOG) a year ago. And most of the eye-popping sums are really a reflection of employment contracts the executives signed with the company when it was run by Time Warner (TWX). Still, they’re big numbers:

• Former CEO Randy Falco: $11.6 million
• Former COO Ron Grant: $7 million
• Former COO Kim Partoll, who replaced Grant last June, but left in September: $6.2 million
• Former CFO Nisha Kumar: $3.6 million

Some of these payouts will keep going. Falco and Grant, for instance, will continue to be on the AOL payroll through the end of this year. Falco will get $1 million in salary, plus a $3.25 million cash bonus, while Grant will earn $750,000 and a $1.6 million bonus.

And as PaidContent notes, CTO Ted Cahall, who made $1.6 million last year, received a “retention payment” of $354,000 on Jan. 15. Ten days later, Armstrong announced that Cahall was being replaced, too.

To put the payouts in perspective: AOL (AOL) said it spent $190 million on restructuring charges last year as it began shedding a third of its workforce.

[Image credit: DVIDSHUB]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100316/aols-golden-parachutes-28-4-million-for-four-former-executives/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100211/veoh-finally-calls-it-quits-layoffs-yesterday-bankruptcy-filing-soon/ http://allthingsd.com/20100211/veoh-finally-calls-it-quits-layoffs-yesterday-bankruptcy-filing-soon/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:52:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=16223 Veoh, one of several well-funded start-ups that have tried and failed to cash in on the Web video boom, is finally calling it quits. The company let go of the remainder of its workforce yesterday, and sources say it plans on filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in the near future.

Veoh, which started as YouTube-style site, has struggled for years to find a business model that works and has burned through $70 million in funding from name-brand investors like Goldman Sachs (GS), Time Warner (TWX), Intel’s (INTC) venture arm, Spark Capital and former Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner.

CEO Dmitry Shapiro declined to comment. He is tweeting, though:

UPDATE: Shapiro is talking now. Here’s my conversation with him, and a blog post he penned himself.

This one has been a long time coming. Last year, the San Diego-based company laid off about a third of its staff, replaced its CEO with founder Shapiro and focused on developing a Web browser-based app. Shapiro has also been actively looking for a buyer, but a copyright lawsuit with Universal Music Group made the site a difficult sale.

The company was buoyed last fall when it effectively won that lawsuit: In a sweeping ruling, a federal judge ruled that Veoh was protected against the music label’s copyright claims by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

That decision gave Veoh executives the confidence to try to gather up yet another funding round. And as recently as January, the company thought it might be able to convince its existing investors to pony up yet again.

But that plan collapsed in the past few weeks, sources said. It’s striking that Veoh couldn’t find any buyer willing to pay up for either its technology or its audience, which was supposedly at 25 million uniques last spring.

Here’s a post-mortem from Spark’s Todd Dagres, a Veoh board member:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100211/veoh-finally-calls-it-quits-layoffs-yesterday-bankruptcy-filing-soon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100204/aol-poaches-another-google-exec/ http://allthingsd.com/20100204/aol-poaches-another-google-exec/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:00:24 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34306

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100204/aol-poaches-another-google-exec/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100202/yammer-grabs-10-million-more-in-funding/ http://allthingsd.com/20100202/yammer-grabs-10-million-more-in-funding/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:24:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23966

Yammer, the enterprise equivalent of Twitter, said it had grabbed another $10 million in financing.

But the question for the San Francisco-based microblogging service for businesses and closed groups is: “What are you working on?”

Yammer has both free and a paid–the gold level is $5 per user, per month–versions and is essentially a useful productivity tool.

Emergence Capital took the lead in the Series B round for Yammer, along with ubiquitous Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway and previous investors.

Yammer previously raised $5 million from Charles River Ventures and The Founders Fund.

Here’s the release:

Yammer Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding from Emergence Capital and Previous Investors

Investment To Fuel Product Innovation and Sales Coverage

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., February 3, 2010–Yammer, Inc., the leader in Enterprise Microblogging and Real-time Communications, today announced that it has received $10 million in its Series B round of funding. Emergence Capital leads the round; with general partner Jason Green joining Yammer’s Board of Directors. SV Angel, led by seasoned Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, is also participating as are previous investors, including Charles River Ventures and Goldcrest Investments from Dallas.

Yammer launched its solution in September 2008 and has experienced rapid user adoption with over 60,000 organizations globally having adopted the solution. Drawing on this momentum, Yammer will use the proceeds to accelerate product innovation and increase sales coverage.

“Yammer is revolutionizing the way employees communicate and collaborate, filling a need that email has failed to deliver,” said Jason Green, general partner at Emergence Capital. “Yammer has a passionate and proven executive team, a compelling freemium business model, a loyal customer base and a huge market opportunity. We are thrilled to be joining them in the next phase of their rapid growth.”

Companies and organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries benefit from Yammer. They use Yammer for a multitude of reasons, including improving workforce productivity, connecting a geographically dispersed team, getting new employees up to speed, and increasing the flow of content and knowledge.

“Yammer is focused on improving the way employees communicate and stay connected to critical information about their company and job,” said David Sacks, founder and CEO at Yammer. “We’re pleased with the rapid growth and market adoption we’ve achieved and are poised to accelerate it with exciting enhancements to our product and with broadened sales coverage. We’re eager to work with Emergence Capital and leverage their expertise in building world-class Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies and are gratified that proven technology investors such as SV Angel and Charles River Ventures are also participating in the funding.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100202/yammer-grabs-10-million-more-in-funding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100129/netflix-no-ipad-early-adopter/ http://allthingsd.com/20100129/netflix-no-ipad-early-adopter/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:00:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=33931

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100129/netflix-no-ipad-early-adopter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100115/intel%e2%80%99s-q4-blowout/ http://allthingsd.com/20100115/intel%e2%80%99s-q4-blowout/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:00:00 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=32856

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100115/intel%e2%80%99s-q4-blowout/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091222/the-boomtown-movin-on-up-tour-of-twitters-new-san-francisco-hq/ http://allthingsd.com/20091222/the-boomtown-movin-on-up-tour-of-twitters-new-san-francisco-hq/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:54:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22200

Why Twitter invited BoomTown back for another visit to its latest HQ after my last one, I will never know.

But the masters of microblogging did and here is my video of the lovely new digs in San Francisco.

Designed by CEO Evan Williams’s wife, Sara, it is an understated, classy and very hip–but definitely luxe–affair, with cream, celadon, lemongrass and azure, among the soothing colors.

It also broadcasts green living, as long as there is also a pricey espresso machine present and accounted for.

Well, Twitter has raised $155 million in funding, so it is probably good for it.

A little over 100 employees toil–although it’s pretty pleasant toiling, with room for about 200 more–in offices most recently occupied by the now-banished Bebo social networking site, owned by AOL (AOL).

Well, the karma of that Web 2.0 stumble seems to have been feng-shuied out completely, as you will see below.

In fact, Twitter seems to be giving Google (GOOG) a run for its money in workplaces that treat their workforces well, which include Facebook, whose new HQ I toured this summer.

Some Twitter highlights include the same freaky pair of green deer from the company’s smaller previous HQ nearby, a Twitter employee I dubbed “Snuggie Boy,” a tricked-out DJ booth, too many giant “war rooms” to count, more bird images than that, a spate of comfy couches and a very odd but compelling stool made of wood dowels.

And, of course, a free and tasty organic lunch, which is de rigeur for Internet companies.

Oh, before I forget, also Twitter employees.

The person who drew the short straw to be my tour guide was Jenna Sampson, Twitter PR–oops, communications–staffer.

She used to work for Flickr at Yahoo (YHOO), by the way, so Sampson is definitely moving on up to a deluxe HQ in the sky.

Here is a link to video interview I did with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone too.

And here’s the office tour video:

Finally, here is my favorite version of the classic television theme song, “Movin’ on Up,” from “The Jeffersons,” appropriately done by Rhett and Link with an Apple (AAPL) iPhone Leaf Trombone app:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091222/the-boomtown-movin-on-up-tour-of-twitters-new-san-francisco-hq/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091211/aols-newest-hire/ http://allthingsd.com/20091211/aols-newest-hire/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:19:05 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13868 For much of this year, AOL made a point of boasting about each and every traditional journalist it hired. Message: We’re dead serious about becoming a content company, not one that sells Internet access to people who don’t know any better.

These boasts grew less frequent in recent months as the company’s hiring binge drew to a close, then switched into reverse when AOL announced it would need to shed a third of its staff. Meanwhile, AOL’s plans to inject automation into its content factory freaked out both employees and outsiders.

So the company’s most recent hire, announced shortly before AOL (AOL) separated from Time Warner (TWX), may help soothe some frayed nerves: New York Times (NYT) veteran Saul Hansell, who will run AOL’s new Seed.com content-creation platform.

But what does that actually mean? Is Hansell going to be running “AOL’s News Borg,” as Gawker put it? Or something less ominous?

I talked to Hansell yesterday and the answer is…not really clear.

Hansell, who spent 17 years at the Times, can’t spell out exactly what he’s going to do at AOL because he’s not exactly sure himself. He says he reached out to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong when the paper announced its most recent round of buyouts in October, and then he and the company went about creating a job that made sense for him.

But beyond his new title, “programming director,” a lot of what Hansell will do at his new gig is do is up in the air. The positive spin: That’s okay because uncertainty is a way of life at a start-up and AOL is in many ways a company that has to reinvent itself on the fly, just like a start-up. You can fill in the less positive interpretation of this yourself.

Hansell does have some big-picture ideas about AOL’s ability to combine its audience, workforce, technology and ad sales to produce a next-generation publishing platform. And in the interview, he offers a very nice parable about visiting Amazon’s (AMZN) warehouse, where technology and humans coexist quite nicely.

Okay. But what about the robots he’s supposed to be in charge of? “I don’t know anything about the robots,” Hansell says. “I haven’t gotten there.”

Anyway, Hansell was a good sport about letting me shove a Flip camera very close to his face, and he can tell his story much better than I can. So here you go:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091211/aols-newest-hire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091120/google-uncrates-chrome/ http://allthingsd.com/20091120/google-uncrates-chrome/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:00:19 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=29558

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091120/google-uncrates-chrome/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091119/aol-layoff-package-you-stay-you-pay/ http://allthingsd.com/20091119/aol-layoff-package-you-stay-you-pay/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:25:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20878

BoomTown has learned that AOL is offering those who “volunteer” to leave the company now a departure package that ranges from three to nine months of pay, compared to one to four months for employees laid off in the first quarter of next year.

It’s a depressing rock-and-a-hard-place choice.

An AOL spokesperson confirmed the offer, which is part of a massive layoff of 2,500 of its 6,000-person workforce.

Earlier today, AOL said it would be letting go a big chunk of its staff, a third of its payroll, in a regulatory filing.

As reported by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka:

The voluntary layoff program begins Dec. 4, a few days before the company spins off from Time Warner (TWX). If AOL doesn’t get enough volunteers, it will ax people on its own.

This is lousy news for employees, who are faced with a “jump now or wait to be pushed” decision, but it is designed to cheer investors: AOL says the cuts will drop its annual operating expenses by $300 million. Through the first nine months of this year, AOL’s operating expenses ran around $1.8 billion.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091119/aol-layoff-package-you-stay-you-pay/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091105/realnetworks-to-lay-off-four-percent-of-staff-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20091105/realnetworks-to-lay-off-four-percent-of-staff-today/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:34:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20317

The Seattle area is going to get another jobless jolt today, with RealNetworks planning to lay off four percent of its workforce, sources said.

That’s a small number–just about 70 people out of its 1,700-person staff–but the move comes on the heels of layoffs of another 800 employees at nearby Microsoft yesterday.

The software giant has cut thousands of jobs over the last year, part of a move to eliminate 5,000 positions by mid-2010.

While the dismissals–which are likely to be announced by managers to affected RealNetworks (RNWK) employees sometime this morning–will be global, both companies are tech leaders with headquarters in the Pacific Northwest.

According to sources, the reasons for the layoffs at RealNetworks are, as was the case at Microsoft (MSFT), to realign the workforce after the recent economic downturn and to control costs.

But RealNetworks could also hire back some of the laid-off employees, as other parts of the company are expanding.

The company had signaled the possibility of staff cuts previously, but had not been specific.

The last staff cuts at the company, which makes digital media software and tools, were larger, about 130 employees sacked about a year ago.

RealNetworks announced better-than-expected third-quarter earnings last week, barely returning to profitability by cutting costs to make up for weaker revenue.

(Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski contributed to this report.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091105/realnetworks-to-lay-off-four-percent-of-staff-today/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091007/google-says-googles-perks-are-overrated-and-belt-tightening-is-underrated/ http://allthingsd.com/20091007/google-says-googles-perks-are-overrated-and-belt-tightening-is-underrated/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:41:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11856 Hey Googlers! All those perks the company is famous for: The great food, the high-end daycare, the fancy bathrooms? Overrated, your bosses say. So is the dream of getting insanely wealthy at your job.

Instead, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said today, you ought to be happy to work at Google…because it’s Google. In that sense, Schmidt said, the recession of the past year has been good for the company since it has highlighted the difference between working at his company and other options–including not working at all.

Schmidt’s comments came during a press conference he and Sergey Brin held today, which was wide-ranging and went down several interesting avenues. I’m reproducing a long chunk of it here from my recording of the chat, because I think it addresses one of the core challenges Google (GOOG) has: How to keep the innovative energy and intelligence the company had from its garage start-up days now that it’s a 20,000-person monster.

Google has been grappling with this for quite some time, but the challenge became more evident in the last year or so as the company began cutting back on perks like free food and low-cost child care, and even made its first-ever layoffs. (The photo at the top of this post is from the 2008 version of the company’s annual “Google Dance,” which was canceled this year).

Those moves were made in response to the economy, but they also did double duty by helping the company “reset the culture,” Brin said.

The exchange kicked off when a reporter asked the duo about a sense of entitlement among Google staff, in reference to a passage in Ken Auletta’s new book about the company.

Brin: I do think there was a period of time where the culture, as it were, was misinterpreted. I certainly remember when we would start, when there were a  few of us working in the garage, and occasionally [co-founder] Larry [Page] would rollerblade in with a few sandwiches for food. And that grew up into everybody’s expectation: “Oh, they should have all the gourmet food they want, at any time.”

I think it’s important to reset the culture from time to time. And I think several years ago we did that. Clearly, people had extrapolated from our past practices what the vision might be. And having actually been there, and knowing the rationale…we decided to, for example, we significantly cut down all the snacks that had been available. [laughter]

[The question is reframed: Isn't the real perk at Google supposed to be stock options, and aren't those much less valuable, now that the company's go-go growth days are over?]

Brin: Well, I don’t know. it depends on where in the graph you look. Certainly it has fluctuated ever since we’ve gone public. Up and down, so…

Schmidt: Let’s say this: It is axiomatic that the best thing to do is to found a multibillion-dollar corporation with free stock, take it public and have the difference between zero and the stock price….That would be the maximum gain possible. For most people, they don’t have the wherewithal and the skills to do that.

Brin: Or the luck.

Schmidt: And luck. Yes, I suppose. In your case, I think, skill and brilliance. People make decisions….The way to state this is that Google pays very well. Google is clearly a growth company, by any metric. And people at Google don’t work for those reasons at Google. We don’t want them to come to Google for those reasons. We want them to come to Google to change the world.

Life is short. And everybody here understands that. Life is short; you should work on the things that are most important. If you want to work on what Google is working on–cloud computing, search, all the things that we talk about all the time–then come to Google and we will pay you well.

That works. We don’t want a different workforce than the one that I just described.

And I would also answer the entitlement question, as I understood your question, as to say that the last year has been very good at solving that problem.

The tightening that [CFO] Patrick [Pichette] in particular did, who I think is the current Google hero, really did change the culture in a much more pragmatic way: “We’re happy to work here. We’re happy to be employed. We love what we’re doing. Our friends, you know, have been laid off.” It’s been a maturing process. And I think a generally good one.

[Image credit: permanently scatterbrained]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091007/google-says-googles-perks-are-overrated-and-belt-tightening-is-underrated/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090616/myspace-a-place-for-layoffs/ http://allthingsd.com/20090616/myspace-a-place-for-layoffs/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:15:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=19595 The ax has finally swung at MySpace. This morning the AOL of social networks announced plans to sack 30 percent of its workforce. All told, 420 workers will lose their jobs, reducing the size of the company’s staff to 1,000 employees.

“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” CEO Owen Van Natta said in a statement. “I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.”

“MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace,” said Jon Miller, News Corporation’s (NWS) CEO of Digital Media. “I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward.”

The news follows a report by market research outfit comScore (SCOR), indicating that Facebook has surpassed MySpace in the U.S. market as the top social-networking site.

Below, CEO Owen Van Natta’s all-hands memo breaking the ugly news.

Everyone,

Today we are making a number of changes to MySpace’s domestic organizational structure. For the long-term health of the company we are making some very tough, but unfortunately very necessary decisions.

We are reducing our workforce from 1,420 employees to 1,000 – all divisions within the company are affected by this restructure.

These decisions are difficult for everyone, but especially for our friends and colleagues who contributed to MySpace’s success and are directly affected by the changes. Through no fault of theirs our company’s size became unsustainable. The future success of MySpace is dependent upon us operating as a nimble and entrepreneurial company with the adaptive mentality of a start-up.

I believe this is the first difficult step toward a major turnaround – a step that will not only shore us up in the short term, but position us for long term success. We need to become a more innovative company. Becoming more innovative is an ongoing responsibility for all of us, not a one-time effort. We are developing a process that will empower anyone in the company to contribute ideas and enable us to integrate your thoughts into our plans for the future. We will follow-up with details on this process in the coming weeks.

This week we will communicate the foundation for our company strategy. In the days ahead, I will visit a number of U.S. offices, starting tomorrow at HQ, MySpace Music, and El Segundo. On Thursday I look forward to seeing everyone in Seattle and San Francisco, and on Friday, I’ll be spending time with the team based in New York.

I’m honored to be working with you on the next phase of MySpace and I’m grateful for your patience during this difficult process.

Thank you,
Owen

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090616/myspace-a-place-for-layoffs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090616/myspace-a-place-for-layoffs-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090616/myspace-a-place-for-layoffs-2/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:15:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=19595 The ax has finally swung at MySpace. This morning the AOL of social networks announced plans to sack 30 percent of its workforce. All told, 420 workers will lose their jobs, reducing the size of the company’s staff to 1,000 employees.

“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” CEO Owen Van Natta said in a statement. “I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.”

“MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace,” said Jon Miller, News Corporation’s (NWS) CEO of Digital Media. “I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward.”

The news follows a report by market research outfit comScore (SCOR), indicating that Facebook has surpassed MySpace in the U.S. market as the top social-networking site.

Below, CEO Owen Van Natta’s all-hands memo breaking the ugly news.

Everyone,

Today we are making a number of changes to MySpace’s domestic organizational structure. For the long-term health of the company we are making some very tough, but unfortunately very necessary decisions.

We are reducing our workforce from 1,420 employees to 1,000 – all divisions within the company are affected by this restructure.

These decisions are difficult for everyone, but especially for our friends and colleagues who contributed to MySpace’s success and are directly affected by the changes. Through no fault of theirs our company’s size became unsustainable. The future success of MySpace is dependent upon us operating as a nimble and entrepreneurial company with the adaptive mentality of a start-up.

I believe this is the first difficult step toward a major turnaround – a step that will not only shore us up in the short term, but position us for long term success. We need to become a more innovative company. Becoming more innovative is an ongoing responsibility for all of us, not a one-time effort. We are developing a process that will empower anyone in the company to contribute ideas and enable us to integrate your thoughts into our plans for the future. We will follow-up with details on this process in the coming weeks.

This week we will communicate the foundation for our company strategy. In the days ahead, I will visit a number of U.S. offices, starting tomorrow at HQ, MySpace Music, and El Segundo. On Thursday I look forward to seeing everyone in Seattle and San Francisco, and on Friday, I’ll be spending time with the team based in New York.

I’m honored to be working with you on the next phase of MySpace and I’m grateful for your patience during this difficult process.

Thank you,
Owen

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090616/myspace-a-place-for-layoffs-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090513/european-commission-overclocks-intel-antitrust-fine/ http://allthingsd.com/20090513/european-commission-overclocks-intel-antitrust-fine/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 20:29:20 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=17624

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090513/european-commission-overclocks-intel-antitrust-fine/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090513/latest-seagate-layoffs-offer-improved-capacity-performance/ http://allthingsd.com/20090513/latest-seagate-layoffs-offer-improved-capacity-performance/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 15:18:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=17591 Seagate is defragging its workforce again. The hard drive manufacturer said Wednesday that it plans to sack another 1,100 employees–2.5 percent of its workforce. With the econalypse driving down orders for personal computers and, by extension, Seagate’s storage products, the company has had little choice but to resort to measures like these as it works to return to profitability. Earlier this year, it laid off nearly 3,000 workers and suspended its quarterly dividend. But clearly, that wasn’t enough. Seagate says this latest round of layoffs will save it $125 million annually and help it become “cash-flow and earnings positive” within its 2010 fiscal year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090513/latest-seagate-layoffs-offer-improved-capacity-performance/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090326/agilent-resizes-employee-paychecks-to-zero/ http://allthingsd.com/20090326/agilent-resizes-employee-paychecks-to-zero/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:40:38 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15471 Black Thursday fell on more than just IBM (IBM) today. Agilent also announced layoffs this morning. The company plans to sack 2,700 employees–14 percent of its workforce.

With revenue in its electronic measurement unit down roughly 30 percent from 2008 to the lowest level in Agilent’s 10-year history, the company had little choice but to “resize” that business. “For Agilent to realize its full potential, we must have a financially healthy company and a solidly profitable Electronic Measurement business,” said Bill Sullivan, Agilent president and chief executive officer. “We will move quickly to resize the EM businesses to the new business levels, align resources to the best market opportunities, and position the company for the new economic environment. We have been very aggressive to date in addressing the downturn in electronic measurement markets. However, business remains severely depressed, and there are no prospects for a meaningful recovery in the foreseeable future.”

Ugly news, especially since “foreseeable future” translates to “until 2011-2013,” according to Agilent (A) CFO Adrian Dillon. “We don’t expect (demand) to come back any time soon, so we’ve got to fundamentally change the cost structure,” he told Reuters. “We will not see a 2008 level of activity at least for two to four years.”

[Image credit: someecards]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090326/agilent-resizes-employee-paychecks-to-zero/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090326/agilent-resizes-employee-paychecks-to-zero-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090326/agilent-resizes-employee-paychecks-to-zero-2/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:40:38 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15471 Black Thursday fell on more than just IBM (IBM) today. Agilent also announced layoffs this morning. The company plans to sack 2,700 employees–14 percent of its workforce.

With revenue in its electronic measurement unit down roughly 30 percent from 2008 to the lowest level in Agilent’s 10-year history, the company had little choice but to “resize” that business. “For Agilent to realize its full potential, we must have a financially healthy company and a solidly profitable Electronic Measurement business,” said Bill Sullivan, Agilent president and chief executive officer. “We will move quickly to resize the EM businesses to the new business levels, align resources to the best market opportunities, and position the company for the new economic environment. We have been very aggressive to date in addressing the downturn in electronic measurement markets. However, business remains severely depressed, and there are no prospects for a meaningful recovery in the foreseeable future.”

Ugly news, especially since “foreseeable future” translates to “until 2011-2013,” according to Agilent (A) CFO Adrian Dillon. “We don’t expect (demand) to come back any time soon, so we’ve got to fundamentally change the cost structure,” he told Reuters. “We will not see a 2008 level of activity at least for two to four years.”

[Image credit: someecards]

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